An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY part being underlet to Fabius Albertini, Prince of Cimitile, at £120, and on 31st October, 1827, he sold it to Samuel Paynter for £1,632. He also had a leasehold house, No. 20 (formerly II), Warwick Street, for which be gave £430 in 1827, and this was sold by bis son to a house agent in 1852 for £40, the term being nearly run out. He was of Gloucester 'l'errace, Park Walk, Little Chelsea, where bis wife died 24th August, 1840, and be died himself there on 21st September, 1843, aged 69, his death being caused by an effusion of serum at the base of the brain, and was buried with his wife at Kensal Green Cemetery. His life was insured in the Hope Assurance Company and he left all his property to his only surviving son Edward. He was a man of medium size but very strong, very acute and ready in most things, and about as temperate as most men of the period. All his life he kept up his connection with Norfolk, and often took the tedious coach journey of the times to Norwich, as did his wife. The illustration opposite shows an old time table used by them both, which I found in my grandfather's pocket book. She being a woman of spirited, not to say snappy, temper, during one journey bad the usual quarrel with a man as to open or shut window, and ht endeavoured to silence her by telling her his name was Rye, and that he was the Sheriff of Norwich (this fixes the date as 1829), to which she replied that her name was also Rye, but that her husban<l. always behaved as a gentleman should, and she wished he would do the same. One thing he and his great boon companion, Charles Burtt, 1 used to be fond of doing was to appoint to meet at the White Horse Cellar at a fixed date and take the first coach which started for anywhere. No anxious planning but a beautiful trust in fate. How Burtt on one occasion, when both were full of spirits, walked through the Grand Junction Canal to save a circuitous walk home, though unable to swim, and emerged safe and sober on the other side, and how my 1 Burtt had a female descent from Richardson the novelist, but the family coulrl hardly have derived their taste for practical joking from that very sedate person. One of his grandsons, though a middle-aged mau, volunteered for the preseutWar, and was uuluckily drowned in the transport.